Absolutes
by yellowcottondresses
Summary: Juliette always believed she was doomed to fail him.
1. Concepts & Theories

**Author's Note: I thought I was done with weird, improbable, complicated AU futurefics when I wrote "Solstice", but apparently I was nowhere close. **

**On that note - consider this a companion piece to "Solstice". Meaning that if you haven't read that…you'll probably want to, at least as a springboard for what's going on here.  
**

**Tons and tons of thanks to whentherightonecomesalong and barkleyandbarnes on Tumblr for reading early drafts of this. **

**I.**

The first time I listened to the video was the first time I heard my mother's voice. I was six.

It was a familiar song – "Angel From Montgomery" – but somehow, hearing her sleek, throaty strum of the melodies made it sound new.

I hit repeat again. Then again. Eventually, I played it so many times that the notes all dissolved together, like the bluesy lilt of a lullaby.

My dad was with her that night, but he didn't sing. You can only see him in the video when the camera pans to him. When it does, he practically swallows the frame – ropey arms and a barrel chest, face all lines and angles, like coolly shutting doors. His fair hair under the signature Stetson, eyes staring at his guitar, and he bowed under the stage lights while my mother stood in the circle and howled to the ceiling.

It was the night she played the Grand Ole Opry. She was nineteen, married, barely pregnant with me. She knew it and so did my father, but they hadn't told anybody yet.

All extra details. You would never know any of that from the video. It's just my mother and the mic, my silent, strumming father off to the side, and her voice reaching all the way to the nosebleeds, the song not so much words or melodies but a feeling.

I may not have known her, but it's something I understand.

I love the way music thrums over you. It envelopes you like a wave. It takes you over completely. Some days I just zone out and wait for the music to take me over, and I want to just get lost inside the rhythm or certain chords like it's a riptide sucking me under. Or a warm, twanging skin.

My dad's like that, too. He and my mom, I think it's the only real thing they shared.

I've seen the music videos, the shaky camera phone recordings, the concert snippets. Seen the way the music overtakes him, how he becomes somebody else once he pulls out his guitar. No, not somebody else. More like…more himself. Or at least, the more "him" version of him than I've ever seen. He becomes the most real version of him that he thinks he's ever been.

I couldn't talk about that with Gunnar. It isn't the same. _He_ isn't the same. Gunnar doesn't go someplace else when he plays; he doesn't become somebody else. Or someone else he doesn't know how to be, unless he hears the music.

**II.**

My ears hurt.

Mom thinks it's from swimming. Dad says it's from sinus drainage. They argue about it like it's going to cure the problem.

They agreed on something, for once – that I should stop swimming – but like that was ever gonna happen. We have regionals coming up, I need to shave seconds off my time, and I need to practice.

Besides – without me in the water with my eyes shut, slicing through the foam like a blade, the sweat and chlorine and feet and overheated pool room, Coach blasting his whistle, I don't know what to do with myself.

I need the relief of knowing I'll be in the water. Down there, I can't hear anything except me. It's like somebody poured me back in my skin. Like my arms and legs and nothing else works unless I'm in the lap lane.

But they made me stop.

If Paw Paw Glenn were here, he wouldn't let them force me to stop. He was there to watch, when neither of them were. Even when he was sick, he'd show up, wrapped in sweaters in the hot pool rooms and cheering me on.

But he's not and my ears fucking hurt and I don't care, but they still made me stop.

Since they called Coach and said I couldn't swim, I have to meet Keller after last bell. There's a rock on the sidewalk that I kick all the way down to the carpool line, closing my eyes and wishing for the foamy chlorine skin. I feel itchy without it and off-balance, like my feet are attached to the wrong legs and my back's all knotted and hunched.

I looked at myself in the mirror this morning when I got out of the shower. My ears were still hurting, and they looked weird. Like they were stuck on wrong, and didn't belong to any part of my body. My legs didn't, either, and neither did my arms. None of it looked right on me; I don't like right on me.

I need to be under again.

Keller is digging the toes of his shoes into the curb when I stand beside him, waiting for Scarlett. Since Dad moved out, she's been picking him up from school. Sometimes it's Deacon, but today Maddie's car is waiting in the carpool line when I meet him.

Keller always runs to her, but today he stares when Maddie honks the horn.

I jab him in the back of the shoulders. "Come on."

"Why is she here?"

"She's picking us up."

"Where's Scarlett?"

I lift up my hand to wave to Maddie, let her know we see her. My arm doesn't feel attached to my body. It doesn't feel like it's my arm.

"I dunno."

Maddie rolls down the window and calls for us, her words jumbled over the sound of the engines and horns and people rushing past us, backpacks and lunch boxes and shoes hitting the pavement.

Keller isn't moving, so I push him forward and get into Maddie's car. After a minute, he follows.

"Hey guys," she says. She's got music playing. She smiles. Her car smells like vanilla and lemons. "Sorry about this. Scarlett had an appointment and Gunnar said he was stuck in a meeting."

Keller doesn't say anything, just throws his backpack into the backseat and climbs in. I get in the front, trying to fold my legs into her chair. They know how to be fins in the water but not walk like legs are supposed to.

"Did you get done with the TV stuff?" I ask, buckling my seatbelt.

Maddie shrugs. "We packed it in early. Told them I had more important stuff to do."

"Was it fun?"

She makes a face.

"Fun isn't the word I'd use," Maddie replies, hunting for her sunglasses in the console among crumpled gum wrappers and plastic CD cases.

"Still. Being on TV is kinda cool."

"Trust me, kiddo," she says, rolling her eyes, "it's overrated."

Maddie looks at Keller in the rearview.

"You guys wanna stop for food?" she asks. "I'm starved."

Keller doesn't answer. Maddie adjusts the mirror, watching him glare out the window, and sighs. Then she adjusts her sunglasses and looks at me.

"You hungry, Finn?"

We pull out of the carpool line and onto the main road. There's a Taquerita there, and a Donut World, and a smoothie place. All of which will have too many people from school.

"Can we go to Beyond Bagels?" It's across town. Less chance we'd run into anybody.

It's out of the way, but Maddie doesn't say anything, just turns and starts heading in the opposite direction.

"What about Beyond Bagels?" she asks Keller, still quiet in the backseat.

He hunches into himself.

"Kel?"

"I don't care," he mumbles.

He might be crying, but if he is I will seriously punch him in the face. With the arm that doesn't feel like my arm.

Maddie sighs again.

"Okay," she says, trying to sound like she's happy. "Bagels it is."

There's a CD in the stereo. I turn it up. Scarlett and Deacon haven't been listening to the radio, either, whenever we're in the car, ever since we heard that reporter talking about Mom and Dad.

Beyond Bagels is almost empty, but still we take a table in the back. The cashier obviously recognizes Maddie, because she does a double-take and smiles extra-wide when she hands her the coffee she ordered, but she doesn't ask for her autograph or a photo or anything.

That's Nashville. You can look, but don't touch. Unless you're my mom. Or those reporters.

Maddie glances at her coffee, turning the cup in her hands, a small smile on her face.

"That cashier knew you," I tell her.

She nods. "Look what she wrote on my drink."

I peer at it. Under her name, MADDIE, the cashier wrote YOU ARE WONDERFUL! and then drew a little heart.

My mom never got hearts next to her name on coffees, that's for sure. But I don't tell Maddie that.

Keller is sitting at the table already, picking the sprinkles off the cookie he ordered. He's got his headphones on, and I can hear the music blaring as he tunes us out. Dad would have a cow if he knew Keller was being rude to Maddie, but since Dad moved out he doesn't know what we do.

"He looks pretty upset," she tells me, as we watch him from the counter.

I shrug. "He's been quiet."

Maddie puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes.

"What about you?" she asks.

I don't want to look at her, so I focus on grabbing napkins.

"Look," she tells me. "You know everything they're saying is bullshit, right? They're tabloids. That's what they do. They lie about everything to sell papers."

She shakes her head. "I mean, if I listened to every single thing wrote about my parents, I would've gone crazy a long time ago. You just have to ignore them, Finn, okay? And Keller, too."

"Yeah, but the stuff they're saying –"

"Is all made up so they can sell magazines," Maddie said firmly. "Okay? You have to stop listening to it. Both of you."

"But it is weird, right? That they're in the same house again?" I rip more napkins out. "I thought divorced people moved out."

Maddie looks so sad, I have to look away.

"Not always," she says. "My mom and dad lived together for a while after they separated. They traded off time at the house until Daphne and I could get used to it."

"And how long did that take?"

She doesn't answer, so I sit down at the table next to Keller. He's still picking sprinkles off.

"Why'd you get that cookie if you weren't gonna eat it?"

"I am eating it."

"No you're not. You're taking it apart."

He glares at me. "Fuck you."

"Hey," Maddie warns, as she sits down next to us. "Don't say that."

Keller scowls.

"Whatever," he says. "Our mom doesn't care."

"Shut up," I tell him.

"Okay," Maddie cuts in, slapping her hands down on the table. "Here's the deal. We finish up here, I drop you –" she nods to Keller – "at your buddy's, then drive this one to Gunnar's. Your dad'll take you guys home. Clear?"

Dad will take us home. Like it's something we're all used to by now. Like today's not the first time we've seen him since he left the house.

Keller slouches in his seat. He looks so much like Dad that it's like looking at a younger version of him. When Dad used to hug Keller, it was like he was hugging himself – smaller, skinnier, light-eyed and angry, wanting to be told it was going to be all right.

He didn't hug me much, but we're not the huggy-type family, anyway.

"Did it work?" I ask her.

Maddie blinks. "What?"

"Did it work. Your mom and dad living apart. Was it easier?"

Maddie's face falls, and it looks like she might cry for a minute and I can't take it anymore.

"It's always hard, Finny," she says.

**III.**

"Can you hand me the mayonnaise?"

Avery sticks his head in the fridge.

"Why do you have two different types?" he asks.

Gunnar slices a tomato in half, then into quarters. He tries to keep the slices thin – Gracie would only eat the sandwich if the slices were thin, and he doesn't need to waste good produce.

"The Duke's is for cooking," he says, brushing aside the unused bit of tomatoes. "The other stuff is for the kids' lunches. So we don't run out."

Avery looks up at him, mayonnaise in hand and a smirk on his face.

"You're a regular Mr. Southern Cuisine," he tells him. "You should have your own show."

Gunnar makes a face. "I just like this mayo, okay? It's sweet. The generic crap is too dry."

"It's mayonnaise!" Avery says. "It can't be dry. It's all goopy."

Gunnar swipes the jar out of his hands. "It tastes like cardboard."

Avery makes a face.

"Mayonnaise is gross on principle," he replies.

He takes a seat at the kitchen table, grabbing his guitar from the case.

"I was working a little on the bridge," he says as Gunnar pulls out the cold cuts Scarlett bought. "I think we should re-work that last verse, too."

"You want me to make something for the boys?" he asks. He slices the ham-and-cheese down the middle, sliding it into a Ziploc. Gracie's lunch for tomorrow. "We have enough bread."

Avery shakes his head. "I'll fix something when I get back."

Gunnar tries not to notice that Avery doesn't say "get back _home."_

They had been trying to keep things out of the tabloids for as long as possible – for their sake and the boys' – but Avery hadn't told Gunnar much about it, either. And if he talked to Scarlett, she wasn't telling Gunnar anything.

"You sure?" he asks. "Scarlett just went shopping today."

Gunnar knew how Finn liked his sandwiches cut, how much mustard – NOT mayo – and turkey – NOT ham – he liked put between those two slices of bread. He'd known Keller since the day he was born, but Keller didn't share a crib with his niece.

Avery is quiet, and Gunnar wonders if he's heard him. But when he looks up from the counter, he sees Avery watching him, his face pale.

"Don't do that," he says wearily.

Gunnar looks at him. "Do what?"

Avery sighs.

"Look," he says, "can we please just…finish this? I gotta fly out in the morning, and I have to be up at four so Emily can drive me to the airport, and I really, really need to finish this stupid demo because I needed it done two weeks ago, and I won't have time to do it when I get back because Juliette's got her thing at the Opry –"

"You're still going to that?" Gunnar asks.

Avery stares at him.

"Yeah," he says quietly. "I'm still going. Of course I'm going."

They stare at the floor for a long moment.

He did promise Avery that they'd work this song out before he had to leave tomorrow. And he needs the distraction, after that spot on TMZ. Not to mention the paparazzi that will be waiting for him.

"You know," Gunnar tells Avery, "we do have a guest room. You could stay here tonight."

Avery runs a hand through his hair.

"I can't do that," he says quietly.

"It's not a problem. Scarlett already suggested it."

"It's not that," Avery replies. "I'll just stay where I am. Easier to leave tomorrow."

He goes back to his guitar.

After a moment, he murmurs, "Stay close to the boys."

Gunnar slides the sandwich into a Ziploc, brushes the scraps aside. After a moment, he grabs two slices of bread and some of the honey ham, because he helped Avery move into the guest house last weekend and he doesn't think there's any food in the place. Not that he blames him – with the headlines in the check-out line lately, it's been hard to quiet Clay whenever they go into Kroger and the boy starts pointing at Auntie Juliette's picture on the front page.

"Hey," Avery asks, finally, "Did you ever hear back from Will?"

Gunnar knows he's only being polite, asking about Will. He's never been a fan of the way he swoops in and out of Maia's life, but after that TMZ spot, the only alternative is talking about something nobody wants to discuss.

Gunnar shakes his head. "I've been texting him all day. He didn't say anything about the ceremony."

From the table, Avery sighs. "Well, maybe he was going to."

"He didn't say anything to Maia, either. She had to hear it from Nate." He sighs. "Who apparently, never told Will he invited her."

"Maybe he was going to tell her." He shakes the barrel of the guitar, rattling a pick that got stuck in its hollow wooden belly. "Maybe he was just waiting for the right time."

Gunnar shook his head. "The right time for what? To tell me he's gay? Sorry, he's about fifteen years too late on that."

He runs his hands over the countertop. Avery has little to no patience when it comes to Will. The way he made promises and broke her heart; like he broke her mom's years ago.

He'd changed Maia's diapers, babysat when Layla had to work. Put her down for naps beside Finn in the same narrow crib, in his and Juliette's old apartment. When they buried Layla, he sang a hymn at the funeral.

"You know, I was there the first time he got married. I didn't want to be there, I should have stopped it, but I didn't. Even though I knew it was wrong." He shakes his head. "But I stood by him."

He turns around and looks at Avery, who is staring out the kitchen window. "Why doesn't he think I would stick by him now?"

Avery sighs. "Man, it's probably not about you."

"I know it's not," Gunnar says.

"Well, you're acting like it is!" Avery throws his hands up. "Look, if he wanted you to be there, he would have said something. So maybe he doesn't want you there. Maybe he just wants it to be the two of them."

Gunnar rinses his hands under the faucet.

_More like he doesn't want me to watch him marry a dude_, he thinks.

Gunnar never thought it was a coincidence – as soon as Nate came into the picture, Will's visits became less and less. Maia knew about her dad – she'd known as soon as he and Scarlett thought she could understand what it meant – but that didn't mean he wanted to act like she knew.

He was reminded of the time Will bailed on her eighth grade graduation. Gunnar took a photo of her in her dress, holding her certificate. He hesitated a moment before captioning it "wish you were here".

He didn't hear from Will all day, but Nate texted her that morning with "CONGRATS, KIDDO! You're graduated! Like a cylinder! Except…not cylindrical!"

Leave it to Nate to use a word like "cylindrical" in a text message. And with the correct use of punctuation.

Will sure knew how to pick 'em.

But Maia still had a father, even if he wasn't around, and whenever he came and went Maia seemed to light up, and Will, too. And it seemed, in the early days, like she loved him more desperately than Gunnar, because he was always either just arriving or just leaving, and the stolen little pockets of time when he'd show up on their doorstep gave her something Gunnar knew he and Scarlett couldn't.

"Can I go to Atlanta next weekend?"

Maia had sprung the question on him at breakfast this morning.

Gunnar was rinsing Clay's bowl under the sink, guiding soggy Cocoa Puffs down the disposer. His hand stopped under the faucet, and he looked up at Maia, who was watching him like she was challenging him to something.

"Where did this come from?" he asked.

Maia didn't blink. "So it's a no?"

"I didn't say that," Gunnar said. "I'm just wondering where it's coming from."

Maia shrugged. "Nowhere."

"So what's the problem?" Gunnar asked.

"Nothing's the problem!" she snapped.

Scarlett walked into the room with Clay's backpack in hand.

"What's with the shouting?" she asked.

Maia stared into her cereal.

"Dad and Nate are having a thing," she mumbled, "and I want to go."

"A thing," Scarlett repeated, catching Gunnar's eye. He shrugged back. "What kind of thing?"

Maia poked at her bowl, like she was stabbing something there.

"I don't know," she said. "Like a ceremony-thing."

After a moment, she added, "They're exchanging vows."

Scarlett and Gunnar stared at each other, eyebrows raised.

"I didn't know about that," he said finally.

"I just heard like, yesterday," Maia said. "He texted me."

"Who? Your dad?"

Maia was still staring determinedly into her bowl of soggy cereal. "Yeah."

He and Scarlett looked at each other for a long moment.

"We'll talk to Will about it," she said finally.

Maia finally looked up, glaring at them.

"My dad said I could go!" she said. "He wants me there. What's there to talk about?"

Scarlett narrowed her eyes.

"I said we'd talk about it," she said, her voice clipped. "And then we'll give you an answer."

Maia gripped the table edge.

"Why can't you tell me now?" Her voice was raised, picking up higher and higher with every note.

"Watch your tone," Gunnar said sharply.

From the living room, Gracie was yelling, "Dad! Where's my backpack!" Clay told her to shut up and turned his cartoon up louder, and Gracie yelled at him to turn it down.

Scarlett rubbed a hand over her face.

"Look," she said. "We will talk about this later. All right?"

She didn't answer before snatching Gracie's lunch out of the fridge and repeating, "All right."

Then she turned and walked away before Maia could say anything else, shouting "everybody better have your shoes on or else you're goin' to school barefoot!"

Gunnar and Maia exchanged glances. Her face was red, mouth tilted down in a scowl that reminded him of Will. His "fuck you, you can't make me" face.

"She didn't say no," Gunnar reminded her.

Maia gripped the tabletop. "She didn't say yes."

Then she grabbed her backpack, rushing out the door to the car before he could say anything else.

Gunnar remembered how small she'd been when he first saw her. Scrawny and red and plucked-looking, the smallest, softest, warmest living thing he'd ever held. She was too tiny to be from Will, or even Layla; he couldn't imagine her being from that big baby belly of hers, planetary and firm. She looked too small to be alive, except he could feel her heart beating right into his hands.

Then her frailness grew into the bold toddler who walked at nine months, marched at ten; she never hobbled or toddled or any of those cutesy words people used to describe babies when they could careen back and forth on sturdy little legs. She moved like a character in a comic book; she never did anything without an exclamation point. WHAM! FLING! WHOOSH! SLAM!

Gunnar remembered Luke Wheeler, laughing as Maia darted around backstage.

"Hoo." He grinned. "That baby's on a mission."

She stumbled into Gunnar, who picked her up. Then she glared at Luke, twirling her pacifier in her mouth suspiciously, the ends of her blonde curls wrapping around the rubber mouthpiece. Gunnar wanted to pop it out of her mouth and pull the damp, long hairs off of it, but Maia would throw a full-scale meltdown if he tried, so he just tried not to think about it.

He'd tried not to think of a lot of things, back then. Like the kinds of things Luke had said about Will, back when it all happened. Or how, after Maia was born, Zoey and Will couldn't be in the same room as each other without things getting too awkward for words. Or how, when old ladies would see him and Scarlett with Maia, walking in the park on a Sunday or going downtown or eating breakfast with Maddie and Deacon, they would always coo over Maia's blonde curls and big blue eyes, clucking their tongues at her while telling Gunnar what a beautiful family he had.

And they'd felt like a family, a real one. Back then. Scarlett's ring on his finger, and the first thing he did when they got custody of Maia was trade in the truck for a four-door, with a baby seat in the back. Plus, with her fair hair and wide eyes, Maia did look a lot like Scarlett, and it was – easier? more convenient? safer? – to let those old biddies believe that they all belonged to each other.

They already felt like it, even if a judge had yet to rule it on paper.

Then it was official a few years later, before they had Gracie or Clay. Before their ACM award, before the Grand Ole Opry, before they could afford a place like this in Brentwood. The judge's ruling made Maia theirs, and they contended with Will showing up in the middle of the night like a phantom, appearing and disappearing in the shadows.

It had made Scarlett furious. Gunnar, too, but he couldn't bring himself to ban Will from their house. It wasn't right, she argued, for them to confuse Maia like this; to leave the door open for Will to break her heart over and over again. Letting him just drop in and out like this was going to only leave open wounds, ones that they wouldn't be able to gloss over when she was old enough to start asking questions about her father.

He didn't want to fight with her about this. Gunnar knew how close she'd been to Layla, towards the end. And she wasn't the only one. Zoey was there when Maia was born, and at Deacon's after the funeral she stood on the back porch in her black dress, crying and cursing and wiping her damp, red eyes with fistfuls of tissues. Deacon had paid for the funeral expenses himself. Rayna had pulled some strings with her ex-husband, who had found him and Scarlett a top-notch family court lawyer that they never would have been able to afford without the influence of the major of Nashville.

For the most part, he'd tried to stay quiet, just focus on Maia. And writing, and Scarlett, and music. But no matter how tired he was at the end of the day, every time he closed his eyes he saw Layla's face on her wedding day, when Will promised he'd be a good and decent husband.

**IV.**

When Gunnar and Scarlett first bought this house, they only had enough room for me and Gracie. Clay wasn't born yet and wouldn't be for a few more years, so it was only the two of us duking it out for who got the bigger room. Which seems stupid now, because they're basically the same size, and anyway, rooms always look smaller without furniture. But that's the kind of thing that matters when you're nine, and six.

I remember, Finn and I plugged his iPod speakers into the wall and set them on the bare white floor. We turned it up and let the music echo through the room, and laid on the floor and stared at the ceiling. It felt too quiet, even with the volume turned up, because everything was empty. It made me feel weirdly empty, too, like the music was going through me the same way it went through the vacant bedroom.

Finn closed his eyes and tilted his face towards the ceiling. I got this feeling that if I didn't grab his hand, I'd float away. It made my stomach feel scooped out.

When Clay was born and they needed another bedroom, they cleared out the room at the end of the hallway, the one that used to be filled with Gunnar's recording stuff. His guitars, his old piano, extra mics and speakers, his drum set and the mandolin he'd had since he was my age. It was all boxed up and relegated to the office downstairs, the desk and chairs moved around to make room when there wasn't much to begin with. Every trace of music was swept away to make room for a new crib and changing table, and painting the walls blue.

I helped paint them. Gracie kept complaining about the smell, so Gunnar and I finished it ourselves. On one corner, I traced my hand and ran my brush over it, the shape still visible in the drying paint.

"You know," Gunnar told me back then, "your dad and I painted a whole house together once."

Then he grimaced. "He painted longhorns on the wall."

"Classy," I told him.

"Yep," Gunnar said.

I stared at my handprint on the wall. If I could paint my father's palm over mine, it would completely swallow me whole.

Nate hasn't texted me back since this morning, when I told him what Scarlett said. Dad didn't answer me at all – what else is new – but if I can get Nate on my side, then Dad can't really say no.

I should just go up there myself. Gate-crash the whole thing. What's my dad going to do then – send me all the way back to Nashville?

Finn has his ear buds in, his book open to the page of math problems he's supposed to be doing but isn't.

"So Avery's at home now?" I ask.

He doesn't answer, so I pull one of the buds out of his ears and ask again.

Finn shrugs. "He's in the guest house."

"Well, that's good. I mean, it is, right?"

He shrugs again. "I dunno. I think it's just because Mom's going on tour soon and it's easier for Dad to drive us everywhere instead of always asking Gunnar and Scarlett."

"How's Keller dealing?"

"I dunno. He doesn't ask questions. He stays at his friend's a lot, so he's not around."

Then he closes his book, and flicks through his iPod. We've been home almost an hour, and he's only done one problem.

Finn will do anything to avoid math. Not me. It's like a conversation that always has a resolution. Numbers can go back and forth, sometimes be letters and sometimes be imaginary and sometimes be not real numbers at all, but no matter what there's always an answer to be reached. It's what always makes sense – there's always an answer, and it's always the same, and there's no room for interpretation.

There was an answer, and problems could always be solved. That's why they were there. It's absolute.

"Here." I hand him my worksheet, the one we did a few weeks ago. It's the same set of problems Finn has now, except since we're the honors class we did the problems weeks ago and already received our grades back. It's one of those stupid things I love about our school – either they really don't believe we cheat, or just want less to grade.

"Just copy those," I tell him, "but change the numbers."

Finn rolls his eyes. "It doesn't matter. Fisher doesn't check them. Once I used the same worksheet for two weeks and she didn't notice. She's, like, three million years old."

That doesn't mean I want to get busted.

"Just change the numbers, okay?" I tell him.

Finn makes a face, but takes the worksheet and starts copying.

I took Finn's class last year like the rest of the advanced math students, with Coach Pitts. He's the coach of the basketball team, but athletes avoid his class because he doesn't bullshit or give them higher grades just so they can play – he flunks everybody equally and doesn't take any shit.

All last year, I thought Pitts hated me. He barked out my last name whenever I had to answer a question, scribbled my grade at the top red corner with red ink that made an A look imposing, like it wasn't as good as you thought it was. And then at the end of last year, Pitts signed my recommendation for honors pre-calculus. He wrote "solid worker. Motivated" in the same strict handwriting he scribbled my grades in, that made the words not seem like a compliment.

Now he teaches AP Anatomy & Physiology for junior year, and this one class called Concepts & Theory, which is for seniors in upper level math. I have to pull a 95 average all three years in every math class before I can qualify to take Pitts' senior class, and so far I have it. I'll keep it, too, because I'm getting into that class.

Technically I still have all the old homework assignments from his class. I could give them to Finn, let him copy the answers. I keep all my old homework, and the binders, in my closet. I could let him have all those, but sometimes, it's nice to take them out, look through them. Just to see.

I'm capable.

Gunnar doesn't get it. He tries, but he didn't go to college; he didn't even finish high school. Scarlett went to Ole Miss for a while, but didn't finish. Neither of them really get school, not like I need to. Gunnar keeps trying to tell me that it's not the end of the world if I get a B, that they know I'm smart and grades don't really matter, and I know what he means but he doesn't _know._

Sometimes, I get so fed up with him that I just want to turn and tell him: _my mom got into Harvard. _

"There aren't any numbers here," Finn mutters, fiddling with the pen cap. "It's just letters."

"It's slope," I tell him.

"The fuck is slope?" He scowls. "They should just rename math class 'what the fuck is that' and no one would know the difference.

I roll my eyes.

Finn stares at the sheet for a second, then pushes it aside.

"This is all such bullshit!" He groans. "There aren't even any numbers in this problem, and the answer is still a number! What the fuck!"

I'm about to roll my eyes again, but there are footsteps up the stairs, and then Avery's standing there, frowning at us.

"You can stop the cussing," he tells Finn.

Finn glares back at his dad, but doesn't say anything.

"We were doing homework," I offer. I don't like it when Avery gets mad. Gunnar I can handle, but Avery makes you feel like he's going to peel you open with the look in his eyes.

"Well, do it without the cussing," Avery replies, but he doesn't look at me – he's still staring right at Finn.

Finn looks away, and Avery walks back down the hall. It's so quiet, I think I can hear my stomach dropping as his footsteps fade on the stairs.

"Come on," I say, when Finn's being too quiet. "Just do the worksheet."

"Or what?" he says. He doesn't look at me, but his hands are so sweaty that the edges of the paper are crinkling, curling into each other. "It'll get cold if I don't finish it?"

I look at the door, like Avery might still be standing there, even though I can hear him and Gunnar downstairs talking like they don't want to be overheard. Finn puts his ear buds back in and crumples up the worksheet, pushing it off my bed.

"What fucking ever," he mutters, and lays back on the covers, closing his eyes.

He's not going to listen, so I take the worksheet from him and fill it out myself. I change a few numbers around and make the answers look wrong, so Fisher suddenly won't question Finn's leap in math ability, but in a few minutes I've finished the whole thing and slide it back into his notebook.

Nate's the only one who gets it. The school thing. He gets why I need to get good grades, why I need Pitts' Theory class so badly. He went to Columbia and got a masters from Princeton, and he's the only person in my whole life who knows what it means, that my mom got into Harvard.

Like Finn, he gets me.

**V.**

She doesn't want to go home, so she and Maddie are finishing their song at the lakehouse.

"Why didn't _Star Towns_ ever ask you to do a spot?" Maddie asks, kicking off her shoes. One of Finn's hoodies is draped over the back of the couch, and she stuffs it under her head as a pillow.

Juliette rolls her eyes. Because Juliette Barnes' _Star Towns_ would have been three things: her empty rented mansions, her full liquor cabinet, and her full bed.

"They found other ways to put me on TV," she answers drily. "Avery did an episode for it, though. A long time ago."

He did, but he didn't like to really talk about it. "The Dark Times", he'd call it, when he'd had a deal and a song on the radio and a sugar mama – which is officially Juliette's favorite part of that story, for the record.

Maddie sighs. "Did they want him to talk about my parents the whole time?"

"No." Juliette kicks her heels off into the corner, and then nearly trips over a pile of Keller's hockey pads. "Shit! Didn't I tell him to pick that up?"

She throws the pads at the wall, where they thump dully back to the ground.

Maddie is watching her with a creased forehead, and Juliette makes herself chill out.

"That was after," she tells her. "Avery didn't start working for Highway 65 until after I had Finn. The _Star Towns_ thing was before we met."

Maddie is still watching her, like she has been for the past few weeks now. It's the same look Deacon gives her, whenever he takes the boys to school.

"The producers are driving me insane," Maddie says after the pauses get too long, and Juliette is grateful. Neither of them really want to talk about the stupid show, but it's better than talking about anything else. "All they did was ask me stuff about my mom and Deacon. And Harrison. Like everybody in this city doesn't already know everything there is to know. And all everybody's interested in is asking 'are they the next Deacon and Rayna'?"

She rolls her eyes when she asks the question, making air quotes with a scowl.

"It's just to sell the show," Juliette says. She sticks her head in the empty fridge like something edible might appear. "They have to play up to that."

"And what, I'm not allowed to be my own artist?"

Juliette shuts the refrigerator door and smiles grimly. "Not with parents like yours, Kiddo."

Maddie blows out a breath.

"You got any vodka?" she asks, sounding defeated.

Juliette peers in the cabinet under the sink. "Whiskey."

"Fine with me."

Juliette can't say she's surprised about any of this. From the time she met Maddie at age twelve, she knew this was the kind of girl to whom Big Things Happened, even without her pedigree of country music royalty.

But still. She wasn't her mother. And she both wanted to be like her and distance herself from her in equal measures, which wasn't something the world granted her.

Like now, with the whole _Star Towns_ issue. They'd spent the day before at Deacon's house, with Scarlett and Clay. They'd shot some B-roll of Scarlett playing the banjo, Deacon on the piano, Maddie on her guitar – the three Claybournes, singing in a round. They'd interviewed both Scarlett and Deacon about growing up with their musical legacy, about what it meant for Maddie to have that kind of pedigree and the opportunities awarded to her. They staged some scenes of Maddie and Deacon writing a song together, of Scarlett and Maddie harmonizing on an old Carter family staple. They showed old footage of Maddie as a teenager, her first time performing at the Grand Ole Opry with Deacon and Rayna at the age of sixteen, and singing at the White House a few years after later at the inauguration ceremony, at the request of the new President and First Lady. There were so many moments, so many highlights that began when she was so young.

"Then everybody wants to talk about Harrison," Maddie continues. "And how we're supposed to be just like my parents. Except that's stupid, because Harrison's nothing like Deacon."

She rolls her eyes. "That's why I'm with him! Who says I want to be with some guy who reminds me of my father, anyway!

Juliette watches Maddie put her hands over her face, pressing her forehead.

"I'm with Harrison," she says, her voice scratchy, "because he's Harrison."

Juliette stares out the window, and thinks that Harrison – quiet, pale, tongue-tied Harrison, who called her "Ms. Barnes" for a whole year until Juliette finally told him to cut the "Miss" crap and call her Juliette, already – was about as far from Deacon as any girl could get.

"Can I stay here for the night?" Maddie asks. "I don't feel like driving."

"Sure you don't want Deacon to pick you up?"

Maddie snorts. "No. He'll just want to talk about it. And I'm so _sick_ of talking about it." She shakes her head. "I just wanna get drunk, and it's not like I can do that in front of him."

She pours the glasses, hands Maddie the less-full one. Then she drapes herself across the futon, which overlooks the calm, clear water. The same water where she and Deacon wrote "Undermine" a million years ago, but she's never told Maddie that particular story and doesn't plan on it.

Who knew that only a few short years after she and Deacon wrote their song, she'd actually fulfill what she'd told him. Build a house by the water, on Tammy Wynette's land. Have her own place to go, to hide. To write and play and create.

Back then, it felt like a reward. And it had been, to see that dream realized. Because so many were finally coming true. The album Juliette released the year after Finn was born – her first record with Highway 65 – launched her right where she'd always wanted to be, at the top of the country charts. It earned her a CMA for Album of the Year, a GRAMMY nomination for Album of the Year in any genre. It drew comparisons to Rayna's first album, in terms of female historical releases. The biggest song off the record, "Has Anybody Ever Told You", was reviewed and spoken about in the same breath as "Rose-Colored Glasses" and "Stand By Your Man".

Suddenly, the people who burned her albums and called her a slut were changing their tunes. It proved that after cheating scandals and renouncing God and having an illegitimate child, she could stand among the greats and feel like it was all right to do so. Like she finally had a right to belong.

And it's not like Avery's life was stalling, either. After Deacon's "Alive At The Bluebird" EP swept a ton of big-buzz nominations at award ceremonies, Rayna asked him to produce her live album at the Ryman the following year. It was supposed to make up for the fact Highway 65 had no main act other than Rayna, since Scarlett left the label and Juliette was too pregnant to handle a major tour. The album, called _American Live!_ was a live concert special with Deacon singing their old hits, along with Maddie and Daphne and a handful of up-and-coming artists from Highway 65 making guest appearances.

He got a lot of publicity for the album, which became a huge success. It went platinum, was nominated for two GRAMMYs, and officially put Avery on the map as a producer – enough for Rayna to ask him to work on more albums for Highway 65, to which he agreed. He not only produced Juliette's first album on the label, but Deacon's, which was also a four-starred, CMA-nominated, award-winning success. And for a while, it seemed like his phone never stopped ringing. He'd proposed to Juliette not long after the GRAMMY nomination, and everything, it seemed, was clicking into place.

So they got married. Built this house. Made music. Another dream come to life.

It had made so much sense, at the time. Like things were allowed to go this way.

She closes her eyes.

"You hungry?" she asks Maddie. She kicks her legs back over the futon and marches to the kitchen, looking through the empty fridge again. She can't sit still, not now.

"Anything but pizza," Maddie replies.

Juliette refills both their glasses, then fishes around in the drawer where they kept take-out menus for nearly every restaurant in the city that delivered. She digs through the pile for the one to Hunan Hut when she comes across a half-eaten package of Twizzlers.

Keller's the only one that likes these things, though why he hid them in this drawer is beyond Juliette. She stares at the package for a moment, then rips off one of the long straws, bites the edges off, and sticks it in her glass.

"Did you talk to Finn at all?"

Maddie busies herself tuning her guitar that doesn't need tuning.

"I did," she says, after a moment. She looks at Juliette. "He didn't say much."

"You know how he's taking this?"

Maddie shrugs. "He asked how it felt when my parents split."

"I hope you left out the part where you ran away from home and had me pick you up at a gas station in the middle of the night."

"I just told him it was hard." She takes an experimental strum of her strings. "Like I said, he really didn't say much."

She takes a bite of the Twizzler straw, chewing on the too-sweet licorice taste. It always surprises Juliette that she hates licorice, even though she's known it for years. Yet somehow, she can never remember that before she takes a bite, and the result always ends up the same – surprised and disappointed. Like a memory you can't stop poking, even if it hurts.

Finn is always her stoic one. Keller's like Avery –shit at hiding what he feels, and wants the whole world to know it – but Finn never gives any of himself away.

"I don't know how he's handling anything," she says, and twirls the end of the candy between her fingers.

Keller's hockey pads are in the corner, still slumped on the floor. They smell like sweat and dirty ice, the inside of a locker room. She ought to wash them, but then figures she ought to wait for Emily's help. If she tries to use the washer, she might end up burning the house down.

Avery always took care of that stuff, anyway.

"You want sweet and sour chicken, right?"

Maddie's voice sounds very far away. "What?"

"Sweet and sour chicken? That's what you usually get."

"Oh, right. Yeah. And a side of brown rice."

Maddie nods, already dialing the number, when she frowns at her phone.

"What?" Juliette asks.

Maddie shakes her head.

"Nothing," she says. "Just Harrison."

"Go on," Juliette says, waving her hand. "Go and answer it. I'll order the food."

"No, it's not a problem." Maddie presses IGNORE, and keeps dialing the number for the Chinese place. "I'll talk to him later."

Juliette rests her hands on her hips.

"Looks like Deacon's not the only person you're avoiding," she says.

Maddie raises her eyebrows at her, but before she can say anything the restaurant picks up, and she turns away from Juliette to order their dinner.

Juliette takes another bite of the Twizzlers, wincing at the taste. It coated her tongue, sticking to her teeth. When she was pregnant with Keller, she'd craved anything salty, but with Finn she could barely eat without getting sick. She hardly gained weight, even after nine months.

She used to believe she was doomed to fail him. Her dark-eyed oldest. The first time she saw Finn on the ultrasound, it felt like someone knocked the planet out from under her. She hadn't even started getting morning sickness, or taken a home pregnancy test. It would mean telling Glenn, Emily. Avery. It would make it too real – the disappointment, the disgust, the guilt. Bitter as the licorice.

Only a handful of people knew, even now. Avery. Rayna. Deacon. Glenn and Emily. And she supposed Gunnar knew, which meant Scarlett probably did as well, but neither of them had ever said a word about it in fifteen years, so she couldn't really be sure.

Maddie didn't know, and Juliette had no plans to tell her. The girl had enough daddy issues of her own to sort through without needing to deal with Juliette and Finn's, and she didn't think Maddie would be too sympathetic to the decisions Juliette had made for her son.

But not all fathers were Deacon. Not all secrets were meant to be shared.

Rayna liked to lecture about putting the past behind her, but she had Deacon. She was one to talk.


	2. Dark Energy

**Author's Note: So apparently this will be a three-parter? Which wasn't planned, but then again, none of this story was. I didn't even plan on finishing it, especially after the new season started and invalidated a huge plot point in this story, but then again this story went off the canon rails a while ago, so I figured, why not just keep going. **

**I.**

I have to get out of here, because after Dad got done yelling at us I still feel like I'm waiting for him to come back and yell again. So I kick my feet off Maia's bed and head to the bathroom, but she's too busy leaning over her homework to notice. She's moved on to science now – the sun and the moon, planets and galaxies, comets and gravity and black holes. The study of the whole universe, like anybody can actually know that.

Maia's bathroom is the best room in the house. It's blue – blue rugs, blue shower curtain, blue towels and makes you feel calm just by sitting there. It smells like brand new soap and sometimes I just sit there and smell it, the spiciness of clean.

Like now. I sit on the toilet lid and look at the blue and it's like being underwater, like swimming. Dad's footsteps aren't on the stairs and Maia is still doing homework, I'm math-tarded and don't give a shit. Who gives a fuckwad about slope, anyway. But Maia loves it. She says it's like planning, making lists, working your way back to square one.

She's weird like that. Always has to do things so perfectly. When we were in seventh grade, we had to make graphs for lab reports and Maia would seriously use half the pad of graph paper trying to make hers perfect – no crooked lines, no eraser smudges, no slanted handwriting. Then she'd get frustrated and start crying, and get mad at me when I told her she was being stupid and it didn't matter if it was perfect, our teacher was the middle school assistant football coach and didn't care about grades and just gave everybody eighties because he didn't want to read the entire lab report. I know that because once I wrote the song lyrics to one of my dad's songs in the middle of a paper about kinetic energy, and he still gave me an eighty-seven.

But still, she'd have to do them. Over and over and over again, until she thought they were perfect. Even though she always had the highest grade in class, and one bad grade wouldn't hurt.

I get it, though. Even when we were little and grades didn't matter, it's always been like this. It's because of her mom, even if she's never said it and gets really pissed at me when I tell her.

Her mom was really young when she got pregnant. Younger than our teachers. When I Googled her, it said she was nineteen when she got married, twenty when she had Maia, and twenty-one when she died.

That's only six years older than I am now. Even Daphne's older than that.

I try to imagine me, six years from now. Being married, having a kid. Being dead. I can't, but I looked at a lot of photos of Maia's mom and think she looks like Maia, except with darker hair. She's pretty. For some reason, she looks like somebody we would know; like someone's older sister we've known our whole lives. She didn't look like a mom, though; she looked like us, like she was our age. Except she wasn't, because she'd had sex and was married and going on tour with my mom.

There's a lot of stuff on the internet of Maia's mom – some music videos and interviews, but mostly clips from that TV show she had with Maia's dad. The show is kind of really famous, even if it only lasted one season before everybody found out her dad was gay. Apparently it was really popular when it was airing, but after everything that happened with her dad, it became even more famous. And then, after the crash that killed her mom, it really blew up. Now everybody's seen it, or at least knows about it. Including all the fucking morons we go to school with.

Maia HATES that show. Hates it hates it hates it. She refuses to watch it, even the parts that don't make her parents look incredibly stupid. She says it's not them at all. I wonder how she knows that, given that her dad's not around and her mom died when she was too little to remember, but Maia says she's never seen anything from that show and never will.

It really is a stupid show, the kind that's only funny if you forget that the people you're laughing are real and have feelings. And I always feel bad doing it, because these aren't the usual reality TV morons who you can tell are too stupid to do anything else with their lives and just want to do anything to get famous.

These are my best friend's parents. And I feel like, whenever I laugh at some dumb thing her mom says or how stupid her dad looks, or think that the whole idea of her parents having a reality show is the worst idea in the world, I feel like I'm insulting Maia.

Besides, Maia never laughs or makes fun of me for the shit people say about my mom and dad. She's the only person who thinks it's all total shit.

In the season finale, Maia's mom finds out she's pregnant with her. She has the stick she had to pee on, and the camera zooms in, and we see two lines appear in blue. I don't think any of this idiotic crap is actually like real life, but that scene is different. She actually cries when she finds out, but it's so obvious they're the good tears. The happiness in her mom's eyes is so real, it makes my head hurt.

I can't imagine what Maia would feel, seeing that.

The scene after that is one with just her dad, being interviewed.

"It's a surprise," he admits, laughing and scratching the back of his head. All I can think of whenever I see that moment is, _holy crap, that's the same look Maia gets. _

"But of course I'm excited," he says, and he smiles into the camera. "I never expected things to go this way, but I definitely believe everything turns out the way it's supposed to. And we're supposed to be parents now."

He shakes his head, like he can't quite believe he's saying that.

"And I can't wait," he says. His voice drops to almost a whisper. "Being a dad is going to totally change my life. And I can't wait to meet the person that's gonna do that."

He laughs.

"I'm ready. I'm excited. I'm happy." He grins into the camera, and the look on his face reminds me of Maia again. I can't decide whether she looks more like her mom or her dad; whenever I see a picture of either one of them, it's like her face is warring to decide which one she takes after more.

"And I'm completely scared shitless."

They don't say the "shitless" part, of course. They bleep it out. But you know it's there.

The next scene after that is with Maia's parents lying on the couch together, with their arms wrapped around each other in ways I only see people do in sappy movies. Her mom's laughing, and her dad pushed back her mom's t-shirt to show the camera her stomach. It's so pale and bare you can't imagine that there's a baby in there, but Maia's inside. He kisses her stomach, the place where Maia's growing, and runs his hand over it. Like he's really touching her, or already trying.

I never know what to do about the whole "gay" thing, with her dad. People at school always call each other "faggot" and "gaytard", and it doesn't mean what it's supposed to mean. A few people still call Maia "Lesbo Lexington", even though she's been going by her mom's name her whole life. Maia swears it doesn't matter to her, people can think whatever they want, but I know it gets to her. It bothers her more when people say shit about her dad than her, though. Once, when we were in sixth grade, someone wrote "DYKE" on her social studies binder in red Sharpie. She threw it out and didn't tell the teacher. But she's been in trouble before for hitting people, guys like Keean Thompson and Jake Bradshaw and Aiden Wells, who have been giving Maia shit our whole lives and said she was probably a lesbo dyke, too, just like her "fucking fairy dad".

But Maia doesn't act like it's weird. She talks to her dad's, like, partner, or whatever, all the time. His name's Nate. They've been together a long time. She says he's really nice.

They met in a dentist's waiting room. She swears it's not as weird as it sounds.

She's been attached to her phone all day, waiting for him to text her about the thing in Atlanta. She texts with her dad a lot, too, but talks to Nate more. When I asked her why, she says that Nate just gets her a lot better. It's easier to talk to him.

Personally, I think someone that gay-marries a girl and then dumps her when she's pregnant with his kid owes Maia a lot more than some text messages. That's just me. But I learned a long time ago it's best to shut the fuck up when it comes to Maia's dad.

Besides today, the last time my dad and I were in the same room as each other was the night he moved out. They were screaming at each other, and it was like they forgot Keller and I were in the same house as them and could hear everything they were saying.

"I can't be around you right now. Just let me get out of here without starting another round of this."

"Fine! I don't have to pretend to care about your feelings!"

The door slammed, and Dad's car spun out of the driveway. Keller was looking at me like I was supposed to tell him what to do, which freaked me out more than anything else.

Mom stood in the doorway, her feet bare. She stared at where Dad had just been standing like he was still there. Then she turned and went into the bedroom, not shutting the door behind her.

Keller was still staring at me like he expected me to fix this, and that kept freaking me out.

"Maybe you should go to bed," I told him, after staring at Mom's closed bedroom door.

"I'm hungry," Keller said.

"Then go get something to eat."

"I don't want anything here."

Then he started crying, and it made me so pissed off to see that, because why was he crying?

"What do you want me to do?" I snapped. "Make something?"

He kept crying, so I yelled at him to shut up. Then he ran into the bonus room and cried on the couch, like a baby.

Mom's door was still shut and Keller was still acting stupid, so I went to the kitchen to see if some food really would shut him up. But there was nothing in the house except cereal, and it wasn't even the kind anybody liked to eat.

Dad did all the grocery shopping. And it looked like he hadn't in a while.

Keller wasn't crying when I went back upstairs, so I went into the den and turned on TV. There was nothing on except this movie Maia really likes, and I thought Maia would want to watch it with me over the phone so I thought I'd call her, but then she'd ask why I was calling her so late, and I didn't want to tell her that it looked like my dad moved out and didn't say goodbye to us, and Mom was locking the door and Keller was crying, and I didn't know when I'd see Dad again.

Mom was sitting at the kitchen table the next morning, with a red and white face. She had a cup of coffee in her hands that she wasn't drinking, and when Keller and I came into the kitchen in the morning she blinked at us like she couldn't remember who we were.

"Mom," Keller said. "We have to go to school."

Mom kept blinking at us.

Deacon had to take us to school that morning. Keller forgot his lunch, and we were already at school when he realized that, so he started crying and I yelled at him to shut up and stop being a baby, and all I could think of was how much I wanted to scream at Dad. Not just because he left, but because I already knew. The Thing I Wasn't Supposed To Know.

I wanted to scream it right in his face. Like it was his fault. And it scared me because I didn't know how he would look at me if he found out I knew.

My ears still hurt.

I want to pull them but it'll just hurt worse. It's quiet in here. I want to be in the water. I feel twitchy and restless if I don't get in the pool at least once a day. I have to swim every day, because then I'm too tired to feel like I'm twitching and humming and itching with the things that keep replaying over and over again, the shit I wish I didn't have to know.

I don't want to go home. I want Paw Paw Glenn to still be here. I don't want to listen to the reporters or the people at school or the grocery store headlines.

I want it all to stop, stop, _stop._

**II.**

Around the third or fourth drink, Maddie ditches her guitar for Avery's piano in the corner, one that was slightly out of tune. But Maddie's fingers are jumping from key to key without her usual finesse, so it hardly matters that no one had played this piano in a few months.

Deacon taught himself to play the piano, as did Gunnar. Only Avery had formal lessons as a kid, playing in recitals and everything.

She used to beg him to play for her. His favorite composer was Chopin – Juliette had pronounced it "Chop-In" in her head, and when she heard that it was actually pronounced "Show-PAN", she was grateful she never gave Avery the opportunity to correct her on it. She had some of his compositions downloaded on her iPod; it used to be her pre-show warm-up music, to shut everything out.

He played once at a summer picnic once. They were all goofing around, singing old songs and passing guitars around, and Avery ended up plunked down on Scarlett's keyboard. He started playing, and all of a sudden everybody stopped – even Clay, who was a few months old back then and sat drooling, mesmerized, in Scarlett's lap.

"I had no idea you could play like that," Deacon said, when it was over. It took a minute after the music stopped for anyone to talk, and hearing his words felt like surfacing after holding your breath under the water. "And I've known you for how long?"

Avery shrugged.

"I'll tell my mother the great Deacon Claybourne just complimented her piano lessons," he said with a slight smile. "She'll be thrilled."

She wondered why he didn't play anymore. Or maybe he just didn't play for her.

Maddie is still plinking out a manic little melody. Her phone is on the coffee table – two missed calls from Harrison – and Juliette figures she's not the only one avoiding going home.

She doesn't see what she has to look forward to, being there. Padding through the home at night, Avery gone and the boys asleep. It's a relatively new house – they only moved in two years ago – but it's funny how the walls always feel etched with the same words, the same echoes:

_do you deserve this? Do you deserve this bed? This life? These people you think love you?_

The worst confession – sometimes, she thought, _maybe_.

Like when the boys were small and noisy, filled with sweat and energy and sticky hands. Sometimes they'd wake her and Avery up at five in the morning; sometimes they'd spill orange juice on her clothes and she'd snap at them; sometimes she'd be stuck cleaning barf out of the carpets and doing laundry when they got sick in the middle of the night. When they were really small, Avery would keep them backstage during her shows, wearing noise-cancelling headphones that looked comically huge on their round baby heads. The walls to their bedrooms were painted with smiling airplanes and dinosaurs, and even the clouds had a little grin to them. They dealt with Finn's pathological fear of dogs, the way Keller sucked his thumb until he was almost seven.

She signed away her rights to her own life at fifteen, writing her name on that Edgehill contract. The right to her own privacy, her own secrets, the context to every word that came out of her mouth. The price of fame, everyone told her. The price – sitting in the laps of men who patted her head and told her she was a "pretty little thing", and never asked, just took. Tabloids following her car. People accosting her in the grocery store. Snapping flashbulbs in her face when she had a baby in her arms – no wonder Finn had been so afraid of dogs, they must have reminded him of the paparazzi chasing them down the street when he was a baby, their voices like barks as they yelled and snapped their photos and tried to get the best shot of Juliette Barnes screwing up her entire life again, while Avery tried to cover their son with a blanket so no one could sell his face, his fear, to the highest bidder.

And that was after the cheating scandal. The picketing, the riots, the album burnings; the protests of her concerts and the people throwing paint on her.

An album at the top of the country charts less than two years later helped. A little. Just not as much as the price of fame.

And then hearing everybody tell her – _honey, this is how it is. Get used to it._

Once she caught a reporter sneaking around backstage, posing as a stage hand. He was trying to talk to Finn, who was four and playing with his train set. Avery called the cops; Deacon literally threw him out the door. Juliette yelled at Finn about talking to strangers; he ran to Avery and cried, hugging his daddy's waist. She demanded more security, fired the people she had. When Keller was born, a nurse had sold a photo of her newborn son to _Us Weekly_. She'd been fired when the hospital found out, and they'd taken the magazine to court, barring them from publishing any photos of her children.

The last contract she'd signed her name on, she'd made sure to read the fine print. All the restraints and clauses, the rules and by-laws, the headnotes and footnotes and every phrase drafted, right down the last semi-colon. She and Avery had signed on the dotted line only after both their lawyers had triple-checked it.

None of them would ever speak of this to any of the press. Avery's name would be on the birth certificate, as it had been when it was filed three days ago. There would be no discussions of blood tests, child support, or paternity claims. Then the three of them signed on the dotted lines, and that was the last she and Avery ever saw or heard from Jeff Fordham.

He signed the contract with a fountain pen that Juliette figured cost more than her double-wide growing up. Hesitated the briefest second – just a second.

He stopped just a moment, and turned back to them. A hand ran through his hair, and he stared at the tabletop, looking almost sheepish. Like something might be weighing on him.

"I have epilepsy," he said, finally.

Juliette stared at the ground. She could see the marks, where her fingernails dug into the skin. If he would just _sign_ the fucking paper, already.

Jeff sighed, staring at his shoes.

The silence was about to choke them all, so Avery finally made his throat unstick.

"Really."

Jeff nodded, but didn't look at them.

"I haven't had a problem since I was in college, but I take medication for it and everything." He cleared his throat. "My dad had it, too. It runs in families. Just…something to keep in mind."

He'd signed the contract.

What contract did she sign that gave the world the right to tear her life apart?

Which contract made her Juliette Barnes?

Which version – trailer trash, superstar, cheater, mother, pariah, wife, shame, lover?

Maddie was still plinking away. The girl Juliette had known since she was twelve, a soaring superstar who could go anywhere she wanted, soar higher than anyone Juliette knew. Juliette Barnes may have crashed and burned too many times to count, but she'd never wanted to watch this girl do the same. She'd never wanted to take her down, only watch her fly.

The price of fame was Juliette Barnes being public property. She'd tried not to let it happen to her kids, but like everyone said – _honey, this is how it is. Get used to it._ Nothing in her life was safe or sacred, including her boys. She was created by other people to be exactly what they wanted her to be, and that may or may not include someone who was looking out for her children the same way she'd needed someone to look out for her, once upon a time.

She'd tried to do the same for Maddie, even as the girl grew into the young woman who sat, slightly drunk, at her husband's piano. Tried to be there for a girl who needed someone when she felt like there was no one else, and Juliette knew too well what that aching felt like; the need and loneliness and fear, and the feeling that no one heard, or cared. Her own eyes used to be so full of it, and she's looked for it in the eyes of her own boys every single day of their lives.

Juliette doesn't think she's ever seen it, but then again, maybe she's just lying to herself. Like the way her own mama used to lie to her, filling her with those empty promises.

Maddie looks up from the keys, at Juliette staring off into space. Then she turns back to the keys, and starts playing the only piece Juliette knows, something she thinks is Beethoven but doesn't want to ask. The girl looks like Deacon when she plays, and sometimes Finn looks at her with an expression in his eyes she wishes she didn't have to see. Juliette looks at Maddie, and still sees the thirteen-year-old girl who sat by the hospital bed of her comatose mother, blaming herself for the destruction all around her.

Seeing Jeff's name on that contract years ago, Juliette still wondered if she'd proved herself right. That she didn't deserve this. Just like Jeff had told her.

She shoves herself off the couch, nearly trips over the rug and her own feet. When she starts thinking about this kind of crap, it's time to get good and drunk. Or, she supposes, in her case, good and drunker.

**III.**

I'm pretty sure Coach is going to pop quiz us on this chapter tomorrow – he usually does that so he doesn't actually have to teach, just sit there at the desk and Google fantasy scores – so I'm trying to not skip every other line on this chapter. Still, I'm halfway down the page when I realize I've highlighted almost every word. I'm in the middle of highlighting a sentence about micrometeorites, which are tiny particles of meteors that rain down to earth and cover us. We can't see them, and they tend to mingle with dust and pollen and dandruff, so we don't even realize that we're getting showered in little bits of the unknown.

Finn's still in the bathroom, doing God knows what. He's already pissed that Avery made him miss swim practice because of his ear. He's as religious about swimming as I am about school, so I don't really blame him for being in a bad mood, but I have my history paper to write, and I can't do his homework on top of my own all the time.

Except I have before. And will probably do it again.

Just not tonight. I think.

He'd do the same for me, which is anything.

It's been this way our whole lives. I can't remember a time when it wasn't "Finn and Maia", or "Maia and Finn". Against the world, because the world was against us.

It's not like we planned on that happening – it's just what happens when the world thinks they know all your family's dirty business, and feels like they're allowed to say and do and judge whatever they want, because they think they have any idea what it's like to be a member of your family.

By now, everybody knows about Finn's mom's big scandals, and anybody can watch my parents' reality show streaming online at the touch of a button. They see these people and think they know them. They think they know _us. _

By the time we hit third grade, everybody assumed my name was "Lesbo Lexington", and people were quoting bits from that horrible show to me, some of the things my mom said that became big catch phrases when the show became really popular. And while people just made fun of my mom for looking like an idiot on TV, everybody remembered who my dad really was. Some enterprising seventh graders started calling me a rugmuncher when they passed me in the halls. I had some random person leave a note in my locker asking me if I did threesomes. Parents wouldn't let their kids hang out with me. Boys told me they'd never kiss a bulldyke, and anyway, nobody would ever want me because I didn't have tits. Girls called me "butch" when I wore pants; "lipstick lesbian" on the dress-up days when we were forced to wear dresses and skirts.

Meanwhile, Finn's mom was showing up in the tabloids, and reporters were camping out on his lawn.

It wasn't like either of us were ever popular, but we were always quietly uninvited to birthday parties and ostracized in the lunch room.

Basically, we've always known that it's just us. And by now, we're way beyond needing anything from anybody else.

Sometimes, though I remember the days before we knew that. Like the days when Finn and I were little, we used to play this game called "Steeplechase". We'd run around in empty concert halls and stadiums and amphitheaters while his mom and dad – or Rayna and Deacon – did their soundcheck, and we'd grab the backs of the seats and jump over them. We'd always end up at separate ends of the venue, but by the end we'd always jump back together. No matter how long it took us, we'd always meet in the middle.

Then there were the nights when my father would show up.

It was always after I was asleep, so at first I was never sure if he was really there or if I just imagined he was back. And then I'd smell him – soap and leather, like detergent and toothpaste, like the road after it rains. I think I can remember the nights he'd show up and come straight to my bedroom, when he'd wake me up just to tuck me back in.

Back then he felt like the sky, buffering the clouds along in it. He'd lie down next to me and wrap me up in my arms and kiss my hair, and ask me to tell him what's going on. And I'd tell him everything, and when I couldn't figure out anything else to tell him I'd make stuff up, just so he'd stay there next to me and make me feel like I was as real as he was, smelling like the road and listening to him call me "the prettiest little lady in all of Nashville".

I'd talk until my throat was hoarse and I was so tired my eyes felt stuffed with sand. And he'd stay there, and I could bury my head into his shoulder, and he'd lie still and just hold onto me.

Before I fell asleep, he'd kiss my forehead and squeeze me tight, saying, "you are the only girl in the whole wide world for me."

On those nights, Gunnar would look at my dad with that face he gets when he wants to say something but can't. Usually it's one that he saves just for my dad, and just for the nights he'd show up to see me.

He hasn't done that in a long time, but I can see my dad's face in shadows, sometimes. Still feel his arms holding me, smell how solid he feels, and even though I didn't know her I can see why my mother fell in love with him. When Will Lexington says that he loves you, it feels like standing right in the sun. He's so real, and solid, and back then I'd believe anything he ever told me.

Like how he would be there in the morning, or how he'd stay the night. How he'd be there if I needed him. How bad dreams weren't real, and nothing could hurt me. How I was safe.

I don't know my mom, but maybe I'm just like her. Because I always wanted to trust him so badly. But I'm not sure that's the kind of thing I'd want to compare notes on, if I'd known her.

My dad never talks about my mom. I never do, either, with him. It never seemed weird that I didn't bring her up, because it wasn't like I had a whole lot of memories to talk about and he never even said her name. Besides, whenever he was around, I wanted all of his attention to be on me.

And even now, we still don't. Talk about her. I'm not sure how either of us would even know how.

Deacon sold his old house years ago, so I haven't seen the room where I lived with my mom the first year of my life since I was in elementary school. When I went to his house back then, I used to see the indents on the carpet where her bed used to be, and my crib. The walls were painted over, so you couldn't see what it looked like in the pictures I saw: the pale yellow color they'd been when I was born, stenciled with red flowers. In the last years he owned the house it was used as a storage room for his guitar collection, and the door was kept closed all the time. Apart from some of Maddie's things that were strewn all around the house, there was no evidence anyone but Deacon lived there. Definitely no trace that a baby had spent her first year of life inside these walls, learning to walk on the wooden floors.

I don't know what would happen if I saw it now. What it would do. It's like bringing up my mom with my dad. I wouldn't know what to do with any of it. I'm not sure what I'd say or think, or how it would change anything. If it even would.

I'm not sure I'd want to compare myself to her, anyway. What would I want to know about her? If she liked strawberry or grape jelly? What was her favorite song? Did she want a boy instead?

Why'd she keep me, after everything my dad put her through?

I finish skimming another page of science notes, looking to flesh out the outline for my paper. An orange highlighter bisects the textbook that's heavier than my head. Orange lines streak the glossy pages. Finn's still not back yet, his math homework abandoned. I try to go back to studying black holes, quasars and white dwarves; matter and anti-matter. Dark energy, the unexplained energy that permeates all of space and causes the universe to expand at a greater rate. It's unexplained, and it's pulling the whole universe farther and farther apart.

We haven't talked a lot about Avery moving out, or Dad not inviting me to his thing with Nate. It's like back in third grade when all the shit started hitting the fan, except now there's all this silence.

It never used to be quiet. Not with us, not like this.

**IV.**

Avery is still working on the same three lines of what's supposed to be the chorus when Gunnar cuts him off.

"It's not gonna get done if you try and force it," he says.

"Easy to say when you're not on a deadline," Avery replies.

"Dude, you've been playing the same three lines for forty minutes now. I can tell when you're forcing something that isn't gonna happen."

Avery scowls. "If it's bothering you so much, I can always leave."

But both of them know that's not going to happen, so Gunnar tries to tune out the same chord rhythm and focuses instead on watching the ravioli simmering on the stovetop.

From the living room, the Christmas tree lights go on automatically, and he catches their colorful glow out of the corner of his eyes. Gracie and Scarlett are both allergic to the real deal, so they had to buy one of those fake plastic ones from Walmart, but it really doesn't look half-bad. A little bent in places, the branches a little gnarled, but it came pre-lit so he doesn't have to fuss with the lights, and it only takes ten minutes to pop up and set out of the box every year, so he can't really complain.

When the kids were younger, he and Scarlett used to go all-out for the holidays. Neither of them had ever had much growing up, so occasions were a really big deal to them, especially the major ones like birthdays and Christmas. They always bounced from house to house, spending Christmas Eves with Avery and Juliette and Christmas Days with Deacon and Rayna, and more often than not Maddie and Daphne would come by and see the kids. Scarlett would spend days cooking and Juliette would somehow manage to snag the best caterers in town for a Christmas feast. On Christmas Day they had a rule where the kids were not allowed to come downstairs before 8 AM, although he and Scarlett could always hear their excited whispers and little feet running to the edge of the stairs, hear their gasping and squealing and anticipation.

He wonders what Christmas will be like this year. They won't be sharing it with Avery and Juliette, that's for sure. And Deacon and Rayna are thinking about taking off for the holidays, maybe going to his cabin for a quiet retreat, or someplace else nice and solitary.

Back around Halloween, he'd asked Micah if he wanted to bring his family to Nashville for the holidays – Gunnar would pay for the trip – but he'd declined. His girlfriend's entire family was flying down from Michigan to visit them in St. Louis, and they were going to spend New Year's with some old friends of theirs, so traveling out of state wasn't an option.

He'd texted Will and asked if he was planning on seeing Maia on for the holidays, but never heard back. Which, all in total, doesn't really surprise Gunnar. When Maia was younger she used to talk about how her dad would show up for Christmas, but then he wouldn't and she'd be crushed and spend the whole day trying not to act like it.

The worst was when he would promise her, and then still break her heart.

He wasn't sure how the subject of Christmas would be this year. Especially with Will and Nate's whole ceremony thing. She'd act like it didn't matter that her dad didn't ask her to be there, even though they both knew it did.

Maybe by now, Gunnar and Maia both should have gotten over the idea that they should expect anything from Will, given that he had never really been a part of her life. Gunnar didn't doubt that Will loved Maia. But love didn't always win the day. And he'd spent plenty of those rocking a fussy infant, or staying awake with the little girl because she had a fever, or moving aside in the bed so she could crawl between him and Scarlett, to know what real parenting was about.

"Gunnar."

He looks up, realizing he'd been spacing off and staring out the window. Music is playing from upstairs he doesn't remember hearing before, and outside the sky is creeping with twilight.

"Gunnar!"

He looks over at Avery, who had stopped strumming the same three notes on his guitar. He's pointing toward the stovetop.

"Your water's boiling," Avery says, and Gunnar turned around to see the pot on the stovetop bubbling over, the burner hissing as he rushed to turn the water down.

"Shit," he mumbles under his breath. "Sorry."

"You okay?" Avery asks. "You kinda spaced out for a minute."

"Yeah," Gunnar says, trying to contain the rest of the water before it spills over. "Yeah, fine."

"You want help?" Avery asks.

"No." He turns down the water and stirs the ravioli. "It's fine. I got it."

A phone rings, and Avery pulls his cell out of his pocket. Gunnar watches his face tighten and then freeze, and then Avery answers the phone with his eyes closed.

"Hey, bud," he says, and his voice is like hearing a pin drop. So quiet you can't even hear yourself breathing; like you're holding it to brace yourself before something big and unknown. "Yeah, I'll be there soon. You got all your homework done?"

They'd sent Maia to Space Camp down in Huntsville when she was younger, at the Space & Rocket Center. She loved it. Everything Gunnar knew about science he could quote from _Armageddon _and _2001: A Space Odyssey, _but he'd put up with Maia's scornful face whenever he mentioned that to hear her talk about space. She talked about it the way Scarlett sang, or Will used to play in front of a crowd of twenty at an A.M. show or a sold-out one at the Bridgestone – like it was the purpose of the whole world, spinning their entire orbits, making them the most real versions of themselves.

Even if he knew nothing about all the science, it had inspired him to buy her a set of those glow-in-the-dark stars, the kind you pasted right above your bed. Jason had bought these for Gunnar when he was a kid, but neither of them knew anything about exoplanets and neutron stars or quasars, any of the things Maia ran on and on about while they glued the little plastic shapes to her bedroom ceiling, forming a galaxy that would glow above her head in the darkness.

"A long time ago," Gunnar mused to himself, as he pasted another star. He grinned at Maia. "In a galaxy far, far away…"

Maia had looked at him blankly.

"It's from a movie," he supplied, scratching behind his head. Shit, was he really this old? Had he already become one of those dorky sitcom dads?

Maia rolled her eyes.

"There's so much going on in this galaxy. I don't have time to think about what's going on anywhere else."

Gunnar tried not to smile.

"Sounds like a plan," he said.

She turned to look at him, hands on her hips, and she looked so serious and ferocious that it made him stop and look at her, biting her lip in this way that made her look way too much like her mother.

Will's intensity, Layla's eyes. It shook Gunnar, whenever he saw that.

"It is," she insisted, jabbing her chin at him. Then she looked up at the ceiling, gesturing at the hunks of little plastic, their jagged edges and the way that without moonlight, they just looked cheap and sad and easily forgotten. "Cause there's all this stuff that's so big out there, and they look so small but really they're bigger than us, and we're the small things."

She blinked at him.

"We're _so_ small," she said, her voice hushed, ragged. "And all these things go on, and we don't know about it, and we probably never will, because it's all too big. And then there's all this other stuff that goes on that doesn't matter but we have to think about it anyway and pretend like we care about them."

She looked up at the space above her bed, the paltry, glued-together galaxy.

"All that stuff, it makes me feel like my head's hurting," she said, her voice still whispery.

She stared at Gunnar, and it took him a second to realize she was expecting an answer.

"I didn't know," he said, his voice quiet, and that was all he could manage. What else could he say to that?

He fixed some of the members of her little constellation that were coming loose from their glue, and Maia kept talking – about how when they looked through telescopes, what they were seeing was really a tiny, tiny, too-too-tiny little piece of the universe, barely a pinprick in a hole in a part of the sky where before we never thought there was anything at all. That in that tiny speck there were tens of thousands of other galaxies, tens of thousands so far away from us that what we see is this single glimpse of them, an image as they were at the very start of everything.

At some point she'd started to cry, and Gunnar didn't know why. So he just her into his arms and ran his hand over her hair, listening to her talk about how in Huntsville, the sky was so big and clear and the stars were so bright, and she could see the smear of the Milky Way in the midst of all the nothing and everything above her.

Maia didn't have those stars in her bedroom anymore; she'd left them behind when they moved, and she'd never replaced them in the new house.

Gunnar wondered if she remembered them, or that day she'd tried to explain the sky and failed. He used to forget about them, and then he'd go to tuck her into bed and look up and suddenly, brilliantly, there they'd be, a shorted formation barely glowing in the dimness.

It didn't hit him them – it took a few years, mostly after Clay was born. He'd be up with the baby, relieving Scarlett from the late-late shift, and he'd be changing a diaper or warming a bottle or just walking the living room with a fussy infant, and out of nowhere he'd think about his brother, and what he would have to say about Gunnar now. Married, kids, house in the burbs; a career and albums and awards and prestige and everything he ever wanted, everything Jason should have and never would and it wasn't fair and it still hurt.

Jason gave up his chance to raise Gunnar. Gunnar gave up a lot of chances for Maia, but they'd never felt like a surrender, or a loss. And then more sacrifices for Gracie and Clay. But he still made it. He had Scarlett. He had his kids. Jason was dead and Layla was dead and Will's chance at superstardom was gone, but he'd made it.

He still wondered what his big brother would have to say to him about all of this.

_You got it made, little bro_, Gunnar liked to imagine. Or maybe he'd just say something like, _hey shithead, you owe me a fuckin' life!_

At least there was Micah. It didn't exactly comfort him to know that his first love had cheated on him with the brother he'd adored, but if there was ever a definition of a silver lining, it was his nephew. He saw Micah a few times a year, usually around major holidays, and while he and Kiley didn't speak much anymore, he and Micah were still close. The boy could have gone a hundred different ways growing up, but he stayed out of trouble, stayed clean, and was the first member of either one of his family trees to actually go to college. Now he was living in St. Louis with his girlfriend and their son, who had just turned two a few weeks ago. Gunnar had flown out to St. Louis to visit them when the baby was born, and it blew him away to hold the infant and realize this should have been Jason's grandson.

Was Jason's grandson, either way.

It was one hell of a sentence to turn over in his mind. His brother had been dead almost twenty years and would never know he had a son or grandchild, but both of them still lived on. What was in the past didn't just stay in the past, no matter how buried it seemed.

Then again. Avery told the whole world that he had two sons, and always meant it.

Just like Gunnar said, when anyone asked, that he had three children.

A son, and two daughters.

Just like he now had a place he called home, with roots to put down. Stability, warmth, comfort. Something solid, and his. A family, even without some of the most important people that had made that up; a slightly shorted constellation.


End file.
